Bio of Ovid Neal

Background on Ovid Neal III 

By Amanda Neal Roth (Ovid Neal’s Sister) 

My brother was Ovid Neal III.  He was named after his father and grandfather and, in turn, they were all named after the Roman poet whose name is pronounced “Ah-vid.” However, my father’s family was from Tennessee and we all pronounce it “Oh-vid.”  

Some basic biographical facts: 

My brother Ovid Neal III was born on March 22,1962 in Inglewood, California, the second of three children, to Ovid Neal Jr., Ruth Ann Wise Neal (now Gordon). I am his older sister by 19 months and my name is Amanda. His younger brother by 23 months is Zachary. 

Our father, a photographer, was a native of Carthage Tennessee who served as an officer in the Army Air Corps, piloting C-47 troop transports over the Burma hump through most of World War II and who went to Art Center College of Design on the GI Bill. Ovid Senior, our grandfather, served in France in WW I.  

As a photographer, our father was well known for his contributions to ground-breaking annual reports for Hughes Aircraft and Litton Industries, as well as print campaigns for companies like United Airlines, Sunkist and Avis. 

Ovid’s mother, Ruth Ann Wise was raised in Wynnewood, Oklahoma and studied fashion merchandising at the Tobe Coburn School in New York before working as a buyer for retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Robertson’s, and the Zale Corporation, a career that would lead the family to move from Los Angeles to Dallas and eventually Manhattan. 

Our parents prized creativity and hard work and held learning in high regard. We grew up in a home with a large collection of books and because they worked hard, our parents enlisted others to help raise us including our grandparents and a fantastic woman named Jane who was with our family for more than 10 years and who had a lasting impact on us three kids.  

From a very young age, Ovid demonstrated a deep curiosity and interest in questions about the meaning of life, God, philosophy and the human condition. He was also musically gifted, athletic (a triathlete), handsome and made friends with interesting people. 

In Los Angeles and Texas, he attended several schools (both public and private) and in New York he attended P.S. 6 and the Dwight School. In Dallas, he attended a magnate high school where he studied jazz, playing drums, guitar and harmonica. In Dallas, he also became a Christian as well as speaker and counselor for the Palmer Drug Abuse Program which sent him around Texas and to other states to help other young people stop doing drugs. He fell in love and lived with a fellow counselor named Ann.  

It was not inevitable that Ovid would become a Christian. We grew up with an atheist father and an agnostic mother and so he had to seek out religious study which he did because he was curious, independent and sought answers to difficult questions. When I was a teenager, I spent summers visiting our father and my brothers at the Diamond K Ranch in Garland, Texas and remember falling asleep to the sounds of my brothers and their friends in deep conversations about the universe, God and the meaning of life.  

Later, as a student at Hampshire College in North Hampton, Massachusetts, Ovid pursued his interest in deep questions more seriously. I believe he stood out a bit at this small Eastern college because of his Texas accent and because he often wore black cowboy boots. He also wrote poetry and during this time, he developed a love for Mississippi Delta Blues musicians such as Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson and John Lee Hooker. His research into Glossolalia (or speaking in tongues) by Pentecostals and his writing on the French theologian Simone Weil caught the attention of his professors and he was offered places in the masters programs of both Harvard and Yale Divinity Schools. He chose Harvard and attended Harvard Divinity School from September 1987 to June 1993. He graduated with a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) on June 10, 1993. 

In Ovid’s first year as a student at Harvard he competed to get into a small seminar class on the history of genocide. His studies exposed him to the saddest, darkest events of human history and this is when he for the first time lost his faith. While at the Divinity School, he also studied Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Bible - especially the Old Testament’s Book of Job. 

I will be forever grateful for the time and friendship I shared with my brother. He was kind-hearted with a great sense of humor and I loved him dearly. I’m especially grateful to our mother who arranged for us to spend a year living together during his second year of graduate work at Harvard. 

During that year we lived in a walk-up apartment of an old building at 16 Evergreen Square in Somerville which is a town next to Cambridge. I’d recently graduated from USC’s film school, needed work and wanted to learn something new — a practical skill that might stay with me through life. 

Ovid helped me get a job as a cook for a small catering company that was housed in the Divinity School and that specialized in catering for special events at Harvard. I learned how to cook (and even met Julia Child) in this job, and these are things I’ll always be thankful for. During this period, he taught me how to make idiosyncratic Southern dishes like hoe cakes as well as a few other dishes that were delicious and cheap to make. 

Ovid taught and exposed me to so many things. He took me to a jazz clubs to see performances by Buddy Guy and Clarence Gatemouth Brown. I will never forget these experiences, especially seeing Buddy Guy play the guitar on his belly.  

I saw and appreciated his curiosity about human nature, philosophy and theology. Ovid was always humble and never preachy. He only ever insisted that I read one document and that was “The Letter from the Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King. He believed in social justice. 

In Cambridge we got a little pug that we named Gatemouth and enjoyed the time we spent with that affectionate dog. We also shared a love of films and I was astonished by the depth of his love of cinema. It was not his field, but he watched and was passionate about more films than many of my colleagues who earned degrees in the subject. 

My earliest memories of Ovid are of a good natured and handsome child. As a kid, I was jealous of his long eyelashes and the fact that he rarely ever had to study to get good grades while I had to work for them. He had a natural talent for singing and earned a place in our school choir — something he was so proud of. When I tried out for the choir — in a way to be like him — he laughed and with the sweet understanding of a younger brother let me know that I could not carry a tune. He was right. 

After all of this, I’m sure you want to know how a 56-year-old man with an advanced degree from Harvard Divinity School, a family and many friends who loved him end up frail, homeless and living on disability in Eugene. 

During his first year at Harvard, Ovid started having disturbing symptoms of a hard to diagnose condition evidenced by three lesions on his brain.  Our mother took him to see many specialists. First, he was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and doctors tried to ease his symptoms with various medications. Later, he received other diagnoses and tried new medications. Over the years, he struggled with symptoms that grew worse and when medications stopped working, new ones were tried. The promise of his early days at Harvard, when his dean envisioned that he would obtain dual degrees in theology and law, faded as he struggled with his health. The fact that he finished his master’s degree and worked while doing it is remarkable. During his student years he worked for Harvard’s Center for Addiction Studies, did a modeling job for Harley Davidson and also worked in a bake shop in New York.  

Later, after graduating, Ovid held a job for many years as a book buyer at Half Price Books in Seattle and was married. Eventually, however, his condition deteriorated, and he was unable to work. This was a slow and gradual process that took years. He got a divorce and withdrew from his family. He almost died during one period, spent some time in a group home, and then reached out to our brother Zach and our mother. He was fragile, and they provided him with a home, care and companionship for a long time.   

Over the years, Ovid’s health declined further and in 2014 he left home, guided by his free will and sense of independence. 

He told me that he needed to be among people, and he traveled across the country, staying in regular touch with me. I helped him whenever I could — sending him money and phones and even a couple of guitars when he hoped he might earn some money by playing music. After a stay in Birmingham, Alabama, he set out for Seattle. There he stayed in shelters and reported difficulties with other homeless people who he said weren’t mentally ill but preyed upon those who were.  

Eventually he traveled to Eugene, Oregon. He was proud of having walked ambitious trails near Eugene. He told me he walked more than 10 miles a day. When I asked if he was going to church, he said the birds and the trees were his church. He loved the beauty of the place and knew nice people there — especially at the White Bird Clinic. In conversations during the last year of his life, Ovid was lucid and thoughtful and very much like the young man I knew when he was in his twenties. I tried to always be available to converse with him and sometimes could not hold back my frustration that he did not have a room to stay in. He explained to me that in Eugene there were so many homeless people including women with small children and people with more difficult disabilities and circumstances than his and he said he felt they would and should get housing first. During one phone call, I caught him when he was helping another homeless person — a young woman in a wheelchair — and he told me that she really needed help and he was glad he could at least help get her to where she needed to go. Ovid was not political, but he was compelled to call out injustices when he witnessed them. We spoke frequently and always expressed our love for each other. In our calls, we spoke of getting together and my husband Nick and I were planning a road trip to Oregon to see Ovid. Somehow, I believed that our lives would someday change course and that we’d live under the same roof again. Now all we can do is appreciate the times we had together — especially the many good times. 

My brother Ovid struggled in his life, but he had a good heart, intelligence and was respectful of others and he was much loved by those who knew him well.